All posts

TV adaptation of the true story of the Gimli Glider: a brand-new Boeing 767 runs out of fuel and must glide to an abandoned airstrip.

Advertisements

Dead cockpit…

If I say “fuel starvation”, you might think it would be unlikely on a commercial aircraft in a developed country. But what if I told you that this happened on a state-of-the-art Boeing 767 on a Canadian airline in 1983? This is the story depicted in Falling from the Sky: Flight 174, also known as Freefall: Flight 174. Continue reading “Falling from the Sky: Flight 174 (Movie review)”

True story of the survivors of Air Florida flight 90, a Boeing 737 that crashed into the icy waters of the Potomac shortly after take-off.

F/O Pettit and Capt. Wheaton (Bruce Wright and James Whitmore Jr.)

As part of my series of reviews on movies based on true air disasters, this is Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac, also known as Florida Flight 90 or simply Flight No. 90, a movie about the crash of an Air Florida jet near the 14th Street Bridge near Washington National Airport on January 13, 1982Continue reading “Flight 90: Disaster on the Potomac (Movie review)”

After a mid-air collision, the press quickly blames the controller, but the NTSB investigator discovers faulty equipment may have been responsible.

John Dantley (Eric Stoltz) at the crash site

A mid-air collision is every air traffic controller’s nightmare. And if it happens, the controller may be the first person to be blamed. This is what Blackout Effect is all about. It is a made-for-TV movie first aired on NBC in January 1998 as a “World Premiere Movie” and co-starring Eric Stoltz (Pulp Fiction) and Charles Martin Smith (The Untouchables). Continue reading “Blackout Effect (Movie review)”

Ten questions about the air disaster genre and the movies that made it.

Image by howzey via Flickr

From which movie does this quote come from: “The 747 is the best aircraft ever made! It can almost fly by itself… Dad calls it the ‘big pussycat’”?A. Airport
B. Airport 1975
C. Airport ‘77
D. Airport ‘79

Who played Ada Quonsett in the movie Airport and earned the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1970?A. Helen Hayes
B. Gloria Swanson
C. Jacqueline Bisset
D. Jessica Tandy

If you are a fan of air disaster movies like me, you probably noticed some are good, some are goofy. Here is an in-depth analysis of a great air disaster movie where a small prop plane and a heavy airliner collide in mid-air. This made-for-TV movie was first broadcast as a World Premiere Movie on CBS in October 1997. It is inspired by the novel The Glass Cockpit by Robert P. Davis. Continue reading “Final Descent (Movie review)”